DRIVING home at dusk last week, I knocked over and seriously injured a magnificent male hare, which, having stopped and got out of my car to check on its condition, I found to be screaming in agony and clearly beyond recovery.

As such, and with both huge regret and horror, I dispatched the stricken animal using a tool for removing car tyres, took it home and, next morning, having slept little, I gave it as dignified a burial as I could muster in the circumstances.

Of course, the incident, an entirely accidental fatality, would not feature on the evening news and those hard-hearted amongst you will be shouting "wimp" and "get over it", which I now have, but it got me to thinking: if the killing of an innocent, and quite splendid, wild animal proved utterly upsetting and provoked guilty thoughts along the line of "could its death have been avoided?", how in God’s name do warmongers like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and those bloodthirsty terrorists on October 7 last year and to a lesser extent since, process the deliberate mass slaughter of men, women and children every bit as innocent as the wild animal I had fatally and accidentally injured?

Fast approaching is the landmark number of 50,000 residents directly killed by Israeli military action in Gaza since the barbaric massacre of around 1,200 Israelis on October 7 last year (the total number of direct and indirect murders is thought to be at least three times those numbers), with tens of thousands more seriously injured.TV imagery of young children with limbs amputated, blinded or scarred, physically and mentally, for life are nigh-on impossible to watch.

Add into the mix some 35,000 civilian casualties inflicted by Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 and, lest we here in the UK get too complacent, the quarter of a million deaths in Tony Blair’s illegal war in Iraq, it is an abhorrent anathema to me that Messrs (and it’s notable these are all men) Netanyahu, Putin and Blair can continue to function on any basic level of human decency with such blood, if not physically, then morally, on their hands.

For me, doing the decent thing by putting my unfortunate hare out of its misery was traumatic, but those ruthless and barbarous "leaders" would appear unmoved by distant images of dead, dying and severely brutalised innocents caught up in their murderous misadventures.

Perhaps we should afford them a choice before waging war where killing and injuring innocent civilians is inevitable; either they send their own children into the combat zones they create, or that they themselves should first spend six months working on the front line for Médecins Sans Frontières, to witness the ugly effects of their cause.

Mike Wilson, Longniddry.

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Stay firm on vaping

I NOTE that Scotland is to fall into line with England on a timetable for banning disposable vapes.

It's estimated that over a million under-18 in the UKs, 51,000 in Scotland, have tried or are regularly using disposable vapes.

Disposable single-use vapes are loaded with high levels of nicotine and have already caused thousands of children to become addicted to the drug. We all know adult smokers and ex-smokers of the past who regret having become addicted by starting to smoke as children.

More than 50 million people have successfully quit smoking across the world. Most did so long before e-cigarettes and vaping were invented. The tobacco industry, which owns most of the vaping industry, has for decades been scheming to get millions of us, including the younger generation, loving nicotine again, so ensuring that they can create billions in profit.

The Scottish Government was the first in the UK to commit to protecting our children from the relentless efforts of the vaping industry to get them vaping. As a retired professional drugs education worker, I know that the nicotine in smoking was the gateway drug that lured thousands of children into smoking, then onwards to cannabis smoking and for many of them to experimenting with many other illegal drugs.

Our MPs must ensure that the vaping industry is not able to undermine the efforts of our Westminster Parliament to completely ban disposable vapes. Only a complete ban will stop this new and dangerous child drug use trend.

The legislation will need to ensure that it is no longer possible for just about any retailer to sell disposable vapes without even the minimal legal requirement of a tobacco licence that can be monitored by the authorities.

The vaping legislation will need to urgently address the issue of the million under-18s already addicted to nicotine from vaping alone. The vaping industry has exploited to the full the statement from the Public Health England’s report that “e-cigarettes and vaping are about 95% less harmful than tobacco”. Sadly our children have believed that powerful statement and have been conned into believing that vaping is a safe drug for them to use.

Max Cruickshank, Glasgow.

Folly of net zero agenda

I THINK the public are beginning to twig that what they have been told about man-made warming is wildly exaggerated, and wonder how it can be that CO2 which makes up only 0.04% of the air can be the main driver of the climate, as the net zero zealots claim. They are beginning to realise what net zero actually means for them, to say nothing about the trillion pounds of borrowing it will cost the Exchequer.

Successive governments have allowed the reckless Climate Change Committee, which is really an organisation with its own CEO, to draft ever more strict zero-carbon budgets which citizens must follow. Moving on from the requirement for battery-driven cars, and expensive heat pumps, this Orwellian organisation is now set on requiring citizens to make what they call "behavioural changes": for example, not flying, not owning a car at all, not eating meat, rarely buying new clothes, and seldom washing the ones you have. As our consumption of energy is set to reduce, so will our standard of living and quality of life. We are going backwards thanks to net zero zealots in positions of power. The difference between people like Ed Miliband and those who throw soup at priceless works of art are simply differences of degree.

Furthermore, the energy security of the country is being undermined in two ways: ownership and grid stability. While the SSEB and the CEGB were British state-owned companies using all-British equipment, 42% of the UK's offshore wind farms are owned by foreign governments, including China. In the auction last month for nine new sea wind farms 70% of them will be built by the Danish company Orsted.

Spanish multinational Iberdrola, the owner of Scottish Power which in turn owns 40 wind farms, made £3.5 billion in net profits in the first six months of 2024. We now rely on a chunk of our electricity generation from interconnectors from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. And engineers are struggling to maintain the National Grid at 50Hz as all our big power stations come off line. Whacky schemes such as giant flywheels are one example of how they are trying to solve this self-created problem. While the huge coal-fired power stations like Longannet, Ferrybridge, Fiddler's Ferry, and Ratcliffe-on-Soar produced 2GW of steady power 365/24 the output of wind farms fluctuates on an hour by hour or even minute by minute basis.

William Loneskie, Lauder.

Vaping is prevalent among the youngVaping is prevalent among the young (Image: PA)

Oxfam should look abroad

OXFAM Scotland is urging the Scottish Government to introduce a tax on private jets since they are "fuelling the climate crisis". It says taxing the 13,000 flights of private jets into Scotland would raise between £21 million and £30m and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

There are 5.4m flights by private jets worldwide so why does Oxfam Scotland pick on Scottish airports? Oxfam should get on with its day job, which is "fighting injustice for a more equal world" rather than preaching the gospel of climate change in Scotland, which has a miniscule 0.1 per cent of global emissions.

There is a huge private jet world out there just waiting to be saved by Oxfam. The US with over 12,000 private planes would be a good place to start, then Brazil, Mexico and Canada. Closer to home is the Isle of Man, which has the second-largest number of private jets in Europe.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow.

Give leeway on heating benefit

I FULLY agree it is daft to pay the winter heating allowance to millionaires and the like, but to restrict it to those on Pension Credit is far too severe. Many with small incomes will be struggling to pay energy bills which have already gone up by another 10%.

John Swinney would win over many elderly Scots elderly folks by paying the winter heating allowance to those whose income is £20,000 or less.

Dennis Forbes Grattan, Aberdeen.

Palliative care not the answer

THE zealots who are so determined on preventing Scotland having legislation that allows assisted dying, invariably trot out "palliative care" as an acceptable alternative.

They should be aware that the life of the Children's Hospice in Liverpool has only been extended at the 11th hour by a £2 million charitable donation from the owners of Home Bargains whose HQ is in the city.

Palliative care (if it is available) might be fine for some people, but shouldn't be foisted on the rest of us at the expense of choice.

John Crawford, Preston.